John Mayer “Love on the Weekend” T-Shirt Designer Jeremy Dean on the Story Behind Their New Merch

Last week John Mayer released “Love on the Weekend,” the first single from his upcoming album, The Search for Everything. While Mayer hasn’t put out new music in a few years, he hasn’t exactly been laying low. For the past year or so he’s been touring with Dead & Company, the band formed by former members of the Grateful Dead. Through the world of Deadhead culture, Mayer became acquainted with the designer Jeremy Dean, who’s built cult following of his own making Grateful Dead x Black Flag bootleg t-shirts. Their initial conversations about design soon lead to the creative direction for Mayer’s new music and the merch that goes with it. This past weekend the first t-shirt designed by the two was released—and quickly sold out—and we’re told there’s more on the way. We tracked down Dean to hear about how the two met, what it’s like to work with the Visvim God, and how he feels about music merch being the latest fashion trend.

GQ Style: Tell me a little bit about what you do?
Jeremy Dean: I’m based outside of Philadelphia, and I am a creative director in retail—I won’t mention the company. I’ve been doing that for the past 18 years or so. And I’ve always done work with bands and been doing my t-shirts, and I’ve had a couple different clothing lines here and there. I worked for a design company called House Industries with a few friends and we had a line called House 33 that doesn’t necessarily function now.

What sort of bands have you worked with?
My life has been mostly in the hardcore world—I did a lot of work for Jade Tree. I did stuff for Kid Dynamite, Turing Machine, The Explosion, Saves the Day. I’ve done tons of record covers and merch for a lot of those bands. And a bunch of other bands nobody has ever heard of. I was heavy in the late ‘90s early 2000s for a few years there.

You do your own line, too, which combines Grateful Dead and Black Flag imagery, sold mostly through Instagram. Tell me about that.
I loosely refer to it as DES, which could stand for a couple things. Double Edge Sword was an offshoot I did at House 33. But now it doesn’t really have a name, and because it doesn’t have a name and exists kind of in this nebulous world I’m still interested in it. When I try to make something “real” I get bored of it fast or I put too much pressure on myself to have a season and come up with designs. This is just me repeating myself, but at the same time I feel like it’s a challenge to keep interpreting this one thing in a weird way. In that way it’s really fun because I don’t put any parameters on myself. It’s still really fun for me and its taken me places that and put me in touch with people that I never thought I’d deal with.

Is that how you connected with John Mayer?
That lead the connection with John. He saw the shirts. A friend of mine does a Grateful Dead-only Instagram page of lot tees and bootlegs—@fromthelot. He and I had been existing in the same world and have been friends for 20 years, and he posted some of my stuff and John noticed it and was like, “how can I get these.” We were going to see him with Dead & Company so I said, “Why don’t I bring you some stuff.” He was really into them and we continued to talk from there. It was a really organic kind of development, over the course of a couple months we just talked and shared designing interests—he’s definitely got a good design eye.

So are you a Deadhead?
It’s a really weird world. This whole thing sprang from me being fascinated by Greg Ginn and Black Flag and their obsession with the Dead. Later in their career they became more jammy and traveled with their own sound system like the Dead. All their roadies wore Dead tees and had long scraggly hair. They didn’t look like punks they looked like Deadheads. As a punk rock skate kid I rejected the Dead. I had friends who were hardcore Deadheads and I always rejected it. But later on as a more mellow adult I went back and started to appreciate what it was and that whole scene. I became fascinated. I did a little more research on the culture, even though I knew about it as a kid, I was so preoccupied by my hardcore straight edge world at the time for me those two words weren’t going to mix. Am I some sort of hardcore Deadhead? Definitely not. I would never put myself in that category, but do I appreciate them, definitely.

What lead you to start using Grateful Dead imagery for your designs?
I saw this bootleg tee that said “We can discover the wonders of nature,” and I thought it would be really funny and stupid to make a shirt that says “We can discover the wonders of Black Flag.” I ended up printing that shirt, and gave it away to a bunch of people and sold a handful Instagram. That’s where it started.

So back to working with John Mayer.
We started talking and he said, “Hey, I wanna pick your brain about type and fonts and whatever.” It was really very organic. He was just like, “I have this new song, listen to it, tell me what you think, let’s talk.” He had all these images and colors in mind, and we started bouncing things back and forth to see where it went. He had a lot of images and ideas about how he wanted it to look and the vibe and color palette. He comes at everything with a real distinct idea, and color is a big focus, and what that vibe is of a song and how that plays out into design. We went back and forth and he’d make suggestions. He was always very respectful of me and what I do. If you could pick a dream client he is kind of it, and I say that having worked with lot of people for a lot of years.

What were some of the specific design inspirations he brought to you?
Early ‘90s video games. A lot of really bright color palette digital stuff. And a lot of art books, but just the covers. How the cover is composed and designed. That was a big part as we went back and forth. There was apparel in there as well—looking at different color palettes and layouts. A mix of all kinds of stuff he was finding and editing.

So where did the conversations lead?
We were emailing and texting, then getting on the phone everyone once in a while to regroup and be like, “Okay, let’s do this.” We were just going back and forth for a month here and there, then all of a sudden the day before, it was like, now it’s due, let’s get it done. It was election night. I left work. Went to vote. And then we worked real time back and forth to tighten it and finish it. I was kinda freaking out, but it was a good thing to take my mind off the election.

The first shirt you did with John went on sale this weekend and sold out very quickly. Was that expected?
John set up a little shop online. I didn’t even know he was doing it. He just set it up and went for it. I was like, oh my gosh that was quick. What’s great about this is that there are no layers. It’s me and it’s him. And he has full creative control, and we just work together and just do it. I’ve had punk rock bands where I’ve had more layers of people to deal with than this guy.

What else is coming?
It’s one of those things were as we work on assets and have ideas and it’s just developing. I would love to help him build out a bunch of new merch and I know he’s got lot of ideas. I think there’s still one other t-shirt other that the one he just release that I think he’s probably gonna have done at some point. Then I think we’ll get into more merch for a tour and all that stuff, but that’s not solid yet. Thats just in the realm of the discussions about a bunch of different things.

The merch world has had sort of a renaissance in the past couple years thanks to Kanye, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, etc. Did that have any influence on this project?
I see it out there in the world, but that wasn’t even part of the discussion. A lot of this has sprung from the influence of this whole weird bootleg culture that’s popped up and has kind of eclipsed the standard issue streetwear stuff. People having the opportunity to design on a small scale. And do whatever they want and have a platform to sell that immediately on Instagram or wherever else. Some things just happen very organically, you can tell by the way it’s done and made. Other stuff—it’s like, don’t try to shoehorn yourself into some sort of bootleg Grateful Dead world or bootleg Minor Threat t-shirt. You see the people that are very authentic, then you see the other people and you’re like, oh man, this doesn’t make any sense at all. God love ‘em. They’re still putting something out into the world, but if it’s not authentic you can smell it a mile away.

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